A Look Back: We Need To Talk More About Schools As Mediating Institutions

During my nineteen year career as a community organizer, we spent a lot of time talking about religious congregations, labor unions, neighborhood organizations and schools as “mediating institutions” (page 699).

These are groups that “mediate” between individuals with little power and government and other larger entities. They perform this function by bringing together these individuals to organize for their needs and beliefs. Edmund Burke called them “little platoons”; Alexis de Tocqueville described them as “associations”; and Richard John Neuhaus coined the term “mediating structures” (read more here).

In our organizing, we would help build “organizations of organizations” composed of these mediating institutions to advocate for their goals and to help develop leadership.